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 King's Quest 6 was a success for Sierra, both critically and financially. By most standards, it's not a very good game, but in terms of Sierra it was a masterpiece -- you had relative freedom in what order to solve the puzzles in, they managed to pay money for people who could sort of act, and sometimes mistakes didn't even kill you! And Sierra's policy at that time was that you just kept on making sequels until the money ran out, so of course Roberta Williams was asked to write another one. And she decided this was to be even more ambitious -- it would be fully animated, like a Disney film you could control yourself. It would span the globe, it would be brilliant, and it would be animated by Pixar. And it would have all of the quality that Sierra, and Roberta Williams, had become famous for. But everyone wound up hating it, and though another King's Quest game did come out (Mask of Eternity, which is much worse than this), it was really the end of the series. Still, while King's Quest 7 was insanely ambitious, and it didn't live up to its promise, the tricks and methods they used to put animation into their game inspired a lot of much better stuff, like the Broken Sword games (and, of course, Jack Orlando). They ran short on time, on money, and had to cut almost a third of the game to make the deadline. So of course it's bad, but let's play it anyway, alright? Though I don't know what the hell Roberta Williams was thinking when she wanted to call it "Rosella Versus the Volcano." That's just terrible. PART 2 THE TROLL TOLL PART 3 ANCIENT VOLCANO OF NO ROSELLAS PART 4 LORDS OF DOGTOWN PART 5 AN EMINENCE FRONT PART 6 DYING SLOWLY corn in the bible fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Apr 3, 2015 |
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Mar 16, 2015 14:00
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PART ONE True to form, King's Quest 7 starts with a Disney-style musical number. Of course, to fit the thing on the disk and make it at all affordable, they had to draw the thing in 10fps (though sometimes it's much lower). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-5HbVWJCL0 If you can't watch it, or are hard of hearing, here are the key facts from the introduction:     There's a popular myth that Animation Magic, the company responsible for such classics as Hotel Mario and the CDi Zeldas, did the animation for this game, and that's why it's so bad. But while they did do some work -- specifically, all the animation in Chapter 1, which you'll see in this update -- they didn't do anything else in the game. Several companies from around the world collaborated on getting the game done, and Sierra even wound up doing most of the final areas in-house when their contractors didn't finish in time. That's part of why the animation looks so uneven and jarring! The opening musical, however, was animated by an American company, Animotion, who also worked on Sierra's other animated games. They've also done lots of other animation for licensed titles based on cartoons, so if you played a crappy Spongebob Squarepants game in the early 2000s then it might have been these guys doing the art for it! And, to their credit, their later work is a lot cleaner and just generally much better. Not great, but better.  One unusual thing they tried with this game is that it is divided into chapters -- six of them. You can start a new game from any of them, even the final one, which according to Roberta Williams made the game "almost like six games in one," which is a blatant lie. The original plan was for eight, and evidence suggests that they were still hoping to make it to seven when the end of development neared. In at least one of these excised chapters, the player would get to explore the "Rubber Jungle," but since no concept art of the area seems to exist it's probable they cut that part early. Other plot threads will disappear without a mention, and in those cases it's safe to assume development issues is the culprit.   My daughter! Rosella! Where are you? What is this place? Where is my Rosella? My child?You may notice that I have subtitles on. This would be a surprise to most people who have played this game, since King's Quest 7 does not actually have a subtitles option. Instead, you have to make the game think you have no memory or sound card, and then the game will replace the voice track with the familiar text option. It's pretty clear that they never meant for this to work; the subtitles look terrible and are fairly buggy, so they're probably just a remnant of a planned full text option (something all other Sierra games had offered, talky or not). Unfortunately, that feature wound up being unfinished so they could make the deadline for release.  The game plays some terrible music here. It's very wacky and comical, I think? But that's not important right now. Valanice heads south, into the desert.  Doing this is made much easier by the (undocumented) option to increase walking speed. You press + on the numpad a bunch of times, and she ends up walking a hell of a lot faster. You might wonder why that's not in the options menu, but the answer is simply that there isn't one. It was cut to meet the deadline.  South again is the whirlwind that brought us here in the first place. You can tell this is a timing puzzle by the fact that Valanice drops to her default walking speed while here, but since she speeds up again once she's gone that's perfectly fine. The whirlwind moves up and down, and it's simply a matter of waiting until...  Got it. It is a hunting horn, and it makes this chapter bearable. You see, one of the things they planned with this game was to let you solve puzzles in different ways, to allay the criticism many had of the older King's Quest games where only one, arbitrary solution was allowed. They wanted to do this in the other chapters, too, but it was cut to meet the deadline.  Valanice heads up north. Note the painting on that rock, it's a clue. Inside the cave, though, are items we need.   It's a basket. The basket is a symptom of another "clever design decision" that Roberta was very proud of: you can examine items closely, and rotate their 3d models to get a better look at them. The trouble is, some bright guy realized you could make people solve puzzles in the examination screen, like so:  Rotate it around until you notice a tiny three pixel aberration and click that, and you get a corn kernel. You need it to beat this chapter, you see!  Grabbing the jars breaks them, up until the last one. It's sort of like a puzzle, I guess? Here's a mouse with no glasses:  I am Valanice of Daventry, good sir. Is there a problem with your eyes?  Of all the rude, inconsiderate--That rabbit has insulted the queen, and must be punished. Here it comes, you little fiend! Ha ha! I got you, didn't I?The jackelope left behind a pair of glasses, and a patch of fur on the cactus behind him. A good adventure game heroine never leaves anything on the ground.   Such a pretty yellow seed! Will you take a turquoise bead? That sounds like a good deal.We trade the corn kernel for a blue bead. And here's another moment of improved design: you can show the mouse any of your items, and he'll make some other rhyming offer, but Valanice will only agree if it's something you need. Alexander would probably have done the trade anyway, forcing you to backtrack here once you realize you made a mistake; Graham would probably have just died on the spot.  This is the next bit. We grab a stick, as well as some salt crystals (the sparkling thing down there by the water). With our fancy new pot, Valanice transfers some water from the pool into the statue's bowl. And then:  Valanice can cry on command, and it's used to solve puzzles. In this case, she's crying into the salty water. She can also cry on other things! Roberta Williams promoted this game as having a warmer, more personal story due to its female characters. We put the water back into the pot. It's still salty.  We actually don't need to do any of that. We don't need to solve the water puzzle, partly because I already gave away the corn kernel you need to do it, but mostly because I hate it. Valanice messes with the statue until it fits the cave drawing from earlier:   Where the water used to be, there's now a statue holding two turquoise carvings. We take the V shaped one, because I read a walkthrough and know that's the right one, and replace it with the turquoise bead.   On the way to the next thing, we spy this ghostly figure. He's probably not important, though.  Oh no!  Quickly tying part of her dress to a stick is the solution. Somehow, this defeats the scorpion. Here's a puzzle:  Here's the solution:  Our reward is an arrow-shaped piece of turquoise, which can be combined with the V we found earlier to create a larger arrow. We're actually done solving puzzles in Chapter 1, so that's exciting.  I mean, figuring out our arrow fits in the arrow-shaped hole on this statue is technically a puzzle, but not really.  Before I forget, there's also this:   End of Chapter 1. Time taken: 15 minutes. Time taken on Retsupurae: an hour.
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Mar 16, 2015 14:02
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Fleve posted:The first instinct upon listening to her mother is to plunge herself headlong into a river, amazing. My neighbor's kitten once did that with our pond, pondering the point of life for a few seconds and then just jumped straight in. But I think the kitten at least had delusions of grandeur and assumed it would reach the other side. The interface being simplified was a big criticism that Sierra fans had for the game. There's one cursor, which changes depending on what you're pointing at -- it's an arrow when you point at an exit, a wand that sparkles over objects in normal conditions, or a crown during non-interactive cutscenes. You can click inventory stuff on the eye to look at it more closely, which is needed for some puzzles. The slider is kind of weird -- in areas which are wider than the screen, you can either walk from side to side or use the slider to pan around it without moving. Ironically, this kind of unified interface is pretty much how all adventure games work now -- the icon-based control that old adventure games used all the time died out during the 90s, and if you play a modern game it's almost certainly going to have one mouse cursor that does everything. So I can't fault the game on that account; it controls fine and having to guess which icon the designers wanted you to use on something was always pretty annoying to me. SelenicMartian posted:Look what else you can get at gog.com Ha ha, no.
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Mar 16, 2015 15:48
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Sierra used to put the number to their hint line in their game over screens. Only 2 dollars a minute! On the other hand, most modern adventure games have a feature to show you where the hotspots on a screen are. Pixel-hunting is pretty much a thing of the past as a result, except in the inevitable crappy throwback games like Quest for Infamy or crappy flash games on Kongregate. corn in the bible fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Mar 16, 2015 |
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Mar 16, 2015 17:46
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Because of how they went about animating the game, there is a lot of concept art floating around. Sometimes it's pretty interesting, and you have to wonder what Roberta and the other people at Sierra thought when they sent off these sketches and then had to deal with the... interesting... finished animations. Queen Valanice, our heroine. Naturally, there's a fair amount of sketches of her, as well as Rosella, the deuterantagonist and other playable character. Her design is pretty 90s, what with the enormous shoulderpads she's always wearing, but it looks fine. Very Disney, but I guess that's what they were going for.  The trading mouse. He has a lot of voice clips, including for items you can never bring to him because you either only hold them temporarily or find them after you can't talk to him anymore. In at least one case (the moon, from chapter 3), I know that's because the item's importance was cut back significantly to make the deadline; otherwise, who knows?  Remember the jackalope? There are lots of pictures around of this guy, though whether that's because they wanted a bigger part for him or just that the developers liked the design and saved it, I have no idea. This one's neat, since you can see some of the animation guidelines in there.  The big lizard from the end of Chapter 1. Probably one of the few cases where the original design is pretty much exactly like its final appearance; I guess it was simple enough to be easily rendered in tiny sprites. And here's some pictures from the opening, which was fully storyboarded.  
corn in the bible fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Mar 16, 2015 |
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Mar 16, 2015 21:56
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Tiggum posted:Could you at least tell us about it? I've played this, and I remember the grey guy is a ghost and you need to give him fresh water, but I can't remember how you get it or what you get for it. Also, is there a place you can only get to by bringing fresh water so you can drink it half way there to not die? Or am I thinking of a different game? You can indeed give the ghost some fresh water, but there's literally no reason to ever do so. We have to go back to the desert at some point anyway so if people are so drat excited about seeing Queen Valanice say MMM, FRESH then I guess I can oblige
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Mar 17, 2015 15:37
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update is delayed by techincal difficulties
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Mar 17, 2015 17:56
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PART TWO The chapters alternate in protagonist, and Valanice was in charge for Chapter One so we're playing as Rosella this time around. Chapter Two is a fair bit longer, and is basically just a collect-a-thon -- you get all the stuff you need, and then you win. Of course, before that happens, there's a lot of talking.  Welcome, most beautiful of princesses!   Hmm? Who -- who are you, sir? I am King Otar Fenris III, ruler of the Vulcanix Underground. And you are the princess Rosella, yes? Oh my. How do you know me? Where am I? I saw a beautiful castle before -- where could I find it, please?Rosella literally lives in a magic castle, why is she so insistent on finding another one? Hell, she's been on adventures before -- even disregarding the novels she starred in, she was the protagonist of King's Quest 4. Though, considering how many times she's been kidnapped, she should probably be more concerned about what's going on here.  Your majesty, what weren't you expecting? What's going on? I... wasn't expecting you to be so lovely, my lady. You will be the most radiant bride in all the world! BRIDE?!This guy is Rosella's love interest for the game. Get hyped, dudes!   I'm a -- I'm a -- I'm a -- A troll, dear lady. Oh, please don't be sad, Princess. You make a lovely troll. A -- a simply stunning troll! They did a lot of animation for Troll Rosella, and it's clear they wanted it to be very loose and cartoonish to contrast with the more Disney Princess style of her regular appearance. Though at least as a troll she's not wearing a ridiculous dog collar. I mean, who the gently caress dresses like that, seriously? Since so much of their animation for her is finished, but unused, it's probable that the troll transformation was meant to be extended or play a larger part in the story. But, if so, that was cut to meet the deadline. Come along, Princess. Let me escort you to your chamber. Perhaps you'll feel better if you rest...  A troll, huh? We're finally given control of Rosella. At least, we are until she leaves the room, where more talking will ensue. We can check out her bedroom, but there's not much here:  Rosella's weirdly childish in this game, even though at this point she's in her 20's and has almost died multiple times. It contributes to the feeling that this game was meant for a younger audience than previous ones. Maybe it is supposed to contrast with Valanice's more mature approach to things, but it's still out of character for her.  Here's the main lobby of the Underground. This chapter, like I said, is a quest for some arbitrary junk; when you've got it all you hand it to the troll in the middle and you're done. Rosella's chapters are all pretty linear, and you can't leave without the things you need for the next one; Valanice, on the other hand, has to backtrack constantly and can easily miss items she needs later on. Though if you're completely stuck, you can just hit New Game and start on the next chapter, I guess. Who are you, missy? You're no real troll! I can see right through you. What do you want with King Otar, you human minx? You're trying to steal the throne of the Underground! Userper, Userper! [sic] Sometimes the subtitles are really bad. There are two styles, and you would think they'd use the one with a smaller font for long dialog, but they don't always. I don't know what that's about. I'm not crying. Fun fact: when I recorded this game, the ensuing dialog that tells you what to look for didn't play. Please enjoy the text I transcribed from low-quality youtube videos for your entertainment. I'm Mathilde, and I used to be King Otar's nursemaid when he was just a wee troll. Anyway, I can give you a list of ingredients for a magic potion that will turn you back into a human, just like that. But you have to do something for me. Anything! Up above this kingdom is a dark land called Ooga Booga. Our kingdoms were never crazy about eachother, but we had a civil relationship. Now, because of HER, the Ooga Boogites attack any troll that shows his face above ground. Missy, when you're a human, will you go above and investigate? I have a gut feeling that our kingdom is in terrible trouble. Now, listen, girl. Bring me some baked beetles, a crystal dragon scale, water of emerald, a silver spoon, and a gold bowl. Got it? Got it.Find all the things, give them to an NPC. Basic adventure game stuff. Suddenly, though, a little troll girl shows up and yells at everyone:  As a good adventure game protagonist, Rosella immediately takes the rat for herself. If it's not nailed down, it belongs to us! She also steals that shield from the wall. You have to go into the close-up examination mode in order to see the shield has a spike, which you need to remove for a puzzle later on. It's annoying. Now, the kitchen is the first place to head to, since if you do it first you cut down on backtracking. Unless you forget to grab things and have to go back there anyway, but that would never happen.   All right then! Just a touch of frog lips! A dash of mouse noses! A sprinkling of spider legs!See, the joke is that trolls......... are gross! It's comedy gold!  Wow, I wonder what the solution to this problem is. We can't do anything yet, though, because he immediately spots Rosella, even though she was hiding her leg behind that rock! That almost always works!  Let's try that again.   I guess the rat somehow closed the door, too. That's pretty impressive. We get Baked Beetles by clicking everything until we find the thing that magically creates some baked beetles.  Another puzzle solved. There's a bowl on the shelf, too! Rosella's solving puzzles like crazy today!  Oh hey, it's the woman from the box art.   BARF! BARF! Princess Rosella, master of stealth.  Geez, Hogarth, ya nearly got yaself fried! Aw, I'm not scared a dat nasty wench. I could break her in half like a carrot. Riveting. We can ask them about the woman who just left:  Malicia, and her fearsome dog Cuddles. For some reason Rosella always ends up fighting fairies; King's Quest 4 was about them as well. Maybe they represent her status as a Strong Female Protagonist. Those guys weren't very helpful, but if we leave and come back then we get to meet some new characters who have important clues for us.   The fact that flowers can be used to wake up trolls doesn't come into play until the very last moment of the game, but we'll be using sulfur very soon. Here's some buff trolls.  Can't do anything with those guys yet, but downstairs is a lantern we can steal for ourselves:  We also need some emerald water, and we've got a bowl all ready to collect it. I definitely didn't come all the way here and then realize I had to return to the kitchen to grab one, no sir.  There's also sulfur down here, and we have to get Rosella across the crevice to get to it.  Wow! What an updraft!  Haha, wow.   Just... terrible. Next time, we'll get the rest of the stuff Mathilde wanted, and then work on getting out of the Volcanix underground. 
corn in the bible fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 18:32
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Acne Rain posted:Wow, the main character has a trollsona, this game was really ahead of the times! And Valanice is a furry, so it's truly the most modern of stories.
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Mar 17, 2015 21:22
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"This was the first King’s Quest game which could not be released on diskette, as the number of disks which would be required to hold the files would never fit in a game box, or even multiple game boxes! The graphics were breathtaking in scope, created by a team of animators who drew individual images, cel-style, and then digitally added color and sequenced the images to produce motion. The resulting animation not only set new standards for game graphics, but also rivaled or surpassed the animation available on TV or film." Concept art for Chapter Two! There's more, but we've got more poo poo to do in this chapter as well so I'll leave it for later. Animation for Chapter Two was done by Dungeon Ink & Paint, but I don't know much about them They also did work on Chapters Three and Five, so it's possible they got the job for being good at doing non-human stuff? I'm not sure, but that seems like it might be a good explanation.  Rosella as a troll. I couldn't find much concept art for her, but they did a hell of a lot of animation work for her, even though most of it's never used. I don't know why, but it's pretty clear they wanted her to look right.  The little girl with the toy rat. You can't see much of her in-game because she is tiny.  Malicia, the antagonist. Her dog is indeed named cuddles, and he constantly BARFS whenever he appears. Make of that what you will. Pretty clear they were going for a Maleficent thing, here, but she's honestly a pretty boring villain and doesn't do much apart from shooting lightning at people. In early prototypes for the box art she's got green skin, but I haven't seen anything else with her that color.  It's the chef. He's a chef. Dude never shows up again and I don't care much about him but he sure is a chef!  The hot tub trolls. They don't all look much like the final product, probably because making them look more alike saved on animation work. It's not certain that that's the reason, but actually I'm 100% certain that that is the reason. corn in the bible fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 23:20
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I've got the Jensen novelization of Sins of the Fathers. The cover art is all taken from illustrations for the game, except for a badly cropped picture of the actor from Gabriel Knight 2. It looks terrible. Also, remember, it's easy to make fun of the animation in King's Quest 7 but at least it's not this: 
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Mar 18, 2015 03:24
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PART THREE So all that's left is a silver spoon and a dragon scale, and Rosella can get back to normal. Both involve spending some time with the smithy trolls upstairs.   Somehow, Rosella has captured a spark in the lantern. This is another of Sierra's "timing puzzles," as you have to use the lantern when the fire is highest. Since the game reduces the player's movement speed to its minimum during timing sections, Rosella slows down and speeds up at random in this room. Good. Remember that sulfur puts trolls to sleep.   Now we grab the tongs from his rack of tools, and use it to pick up the box there.   After cooling the box off, Rosella opens it to find a silver spoon. So all that is now left is the dragon scale, and we'll be pretty much done with Chapter Two! You can put the tongs back on the rack, in a rare case of the Daventry Royal Family returning something after borrowing it.  The dragon is across that bridge. Nobody tells you that, but since it's the only place left to go it's not hard to figure out that you need to go there. Fortunately there is a cart on top of the hill, and we have a shield to replace its missing wheel:   That is some ugly animation right there. Look at it:  Terrible. Anyway, the reason she died is that I didn't affix the shield to the cart with the shield's spike. Bullshit deaths remain a Sierra trademark, but in this game you can just hit retry and you'll be back where you died, so it's never a real problem.   Rosella just straight-up killed a man. She doesn't give a gently caress about it, either.   I am. Do not fear me, little troll.The dragon has some nice, detailed art and it's clear they wanted him to look real nice. But I guess someone along the way decided that lovely CGI was an acceptable substitute, so that's what we got. It is... not good. You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my whole life!The dragon goes back to sleep. Dude ain't got time for this, I guess. We give him the spark from the lantern, because I read the walkthrough and know you are supposed to do that. Um, this doesn't happen to be the kind of spark you meant, does it? A spark! Bless you, little troll! Here, let me have it! This animation is... not very good. I am indebted to you. Here, take this diamond. With it you can live like a princess. Thank you, it's beautiful.. but what I'd really like is... one of your scales? Little one, whatever you want. But I can wait no longer to fly! I will give you a scale when you return.Please be amazed by the majesty of this beautiful creature.   He won't come back until we have something to take the scale from him.    It's all right. I don't mind being interrupted by someone as charming as yourself. What can I do for you? Why, you're the most polite troll I've ever met! Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean -- The true way to Rosella's heart is unabashed sycophancy. No, my dear, I quite understand. I can't tolerate the company of most other trolls myself. Oppi Goldworth, at your service. You don't like other trolls? You must be so lonely, Oppi. But I don't have the money. All I have to my name is this old, chipped hammer and chisel.We trade our priceless diamond for his hammer and chisel, which is a pretty bad trade on the whole but that's fine.  In some versions of the game, there's another timing thing here -- if you try use the hammer at the wrong time, the dragon kills Rosella with his tail. They got rid of it in one of the patches, though, along with some other instant-death timed situations. Since death has no penalty in this game, making people retry things over and over was deemed to be poor design, which may be the first and only time that argument has worked on a Roberta Williams-designed game. We can't ever talk to the dragon again, by the way. There's nothing to do but give our various loot to Mathilde, so she can get this whole troll thing sorted out.   You have to hand them to her one at a time, with loading in-between as it needlessly changes scenes.  Aha! I remember! We need a troll hair!   Then the king appears. I guess he can teleport? It's not clear why he would be able to do that. Rosella! I'm stunned! Your beauty is only surpassed by your intelligence, and your courage, and...Suddenly, Malicia appears as well. But she's got magic powers, she's allowed to pop up at random and annoy people.  You! I've had just about enough of you distracting the king, you little snip! And we're literally back where we started the chapter. This part of the game is blatantly stretched out and it is really a shame. Do you remember the Towers of Hanoi?  Who could hate a good Tower of Hanoi? Certainly not me.    It is time for exposition. We're a third of the way through this game, they might as well establish what anyone's motivation is.  A city here, a township there, who's going to miss them? Even if all of Eldritch is covered in slag, at least THEY will be GONE! BARF! BARF! Oh no! She can't! She just can't!Roberta Williams wanted to call this game "What's lava got to do with it." Not that "The Prince-less Bride" is much better...   Some weird green thing fell down, too. We pick it up, because it's important. You might think the goal at this point is to head for the elevator we saw before, but actually you need to go to the troll baths. Because.... that is where you have to go, I guess? Why would Rosella want to go there? When you do, though, there's more exposition. Rosella's chapters are generally based around lots of cutscenes, strung together by inane puzzle-solving, so this is par for the course.  There's something wrong with him! What have you done to him, witch? You don't want to know, ancient one. Your old nerves couldn't take it. Suffice it to say that it's a lot nicer than what I'm going to do to you!Whatever Malicia's plan for the old troll was, it was apparently foiled by simply walking somewhere else.  At this point, you have to give the green thing (the game calls it a "dragon-toad") to Mathilde.  She does something, and the toad starts talking.  The current king running around is a fake king. It's a shocking twist, or something like that.   Suddenly, more bullshit:  Barf? BARF! Malicia is afraid of small animals, so she vanishes and it looks like we're free to leave. But then she appears again, because that was a fake out or something, I don't know, why is Chapter Two so long and boring and repetitive   Chapter two, complete. Time taken: half an hour. Retsupurae's time: an hour. Chapter three will involve Valanice's adventure in the world of furries, so that'll be exciting. corn in the bible fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Mar 19, 2015 |
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Mar 18, 2015 22:25
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gschmidl posted:Sierra patching out bullshit? One of the other issues addressed by the patch was a Roberta Williams classic idea -- a firecracker you could light, but which would explode and kill you on a timer if you did. Except since you can retry from where you died, it was perfectly possible to wander around forever, with the occasional explosions merely serving as an annoyance. So in the patch they just made it stop exploding, because that was stupid.
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Mar 18, 2015 22:44
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PART FOUR According to Roberta Williams, the troll underground was her favorite part of the game. I can't imagine why, but that might explain why it takes so drat long to get out of there, especially since we're never going back. This section is going to be much shorter, because most of its plot was cut to meet the game's deadline.  Oh yeah, the lizard. He likes prickly pears (and really, who doesn't?).  The hint for this is that none of the other items can be used on him. But at least he seems happy, so that's fine. Now we're done with the desert, maybe (we're not done with the desert, we're never done with the desert)   It's a deer. The theme for this chapter is "talking animals," or possibly "terrible voice-acting." But you can't have voice and subtitles on at the same time, which in a normal game would be a detriment but in King's Quest 7 is like a miracle from heaven. Anyway, the deer has something to say to us:  Then he sits back down. You have to keep talking to him, over and over, until he runs out of things to say. Otherwise you can't complete the game.  Haha, wow  Lady Valanice, know this: the oak tree you see before you was once my wife, Ceres, she who is Mother Nature. I could not stop her being turned into a tree, for I had already been turned into a stag. I, Attis, Lord of the Hunt, could not save her. Who has done such a terrible thing, my Lord Attis? It was so sudden and ferocious that I saw nothing. Only a noble from the high court of Etheria could have done it, but that is unthinkable. I am sorry for your loss, Attis, but I must search on. Farewell, my friend. Valanice, wait. To the far west is the Wood of the Were Folk. Do not enter them, for the Were Folk are never friendly, and always dangerous.So he goes back to sleep, but, like I said, we need to talk to him yet again. Is there nothing that can break the enchantment on you and your wife, Attis? Plot flag, check. Later (much later, like different chapter later) we'll have to talk to Feldspar and it won't work unless you keep clicking the deer until he finally mentions the dude. But we will not be saving deer guy or his tree wife in this chapter; it will have to wait. Here's another jumping "puzzle"   The reason this animation looks ok and Troll Rosella's jump did not is that they were handled by two different animation companies. The global animations, which includes a lot of Valanice's animation, was done by Animation Magic, the CDi Zelda people (they also worked on I. M. Meen and the aborted Warcraft adventure game!), who already had experience in doing animation for computer games. Troll Rosella, however, seems to have been handled by Dungeon Ink & Paint, who are a phantom and never worked on anything else, as far as I know. But here's an except from a 1994 ad that I found, which would likely be around the time they were finishing up work on King's Quest. quote:DUNGEON INK & PAINT Seems like a quality company.   Just cool off for a while, my many-legged friend. There you are, pretty one. Safe and sound.The hummingbird can help us out with something, but that involves backtracking and I want to do as little backtracking as possible. It can wait. Here is some "comedy."  Valanice of Daventry. I seek entry to your town. You may only enter this city iiiiiiif... if you bring me the Holy One-Ton Tomato of Antioch. That's ridiculous! There's no such thing! Oh, and you're going to let a little thing like THAT stop you? You don't DESERVE to be in this town!How will we get into the town. Can you solve the puzzle.  Here is a comic relief dog.   YAP! Get out! I, Fifi le Yipyap, do order it! (slurp) You are a thtranger here, and you have no buthineth in the town of Falderal!It is another puzzle. How will Strong Female Character Queen Valanice get out of this jam?  I want nothing from your town. I am only searching for my daughter, Rosella. She was stolen by some evil magic. Now I fear I will never see her again. I hate this dog and I hate this town and I hate Roberta Willaims  A chicken who thinks the sky is falling! Because of budgetary cuts the chicken's plotline has no resolution. Never mind her, my lady (slurp) She'th very thilly.Fine, whatever. The first thing to do is visit the China Shop. Chapter Three ends when you trigger a specific event, because all the Chapters end on cliffhangers, but there's no direction towards what you have to do to get there, and there's not really any reason for Rosella to even be doing anything in this town. So we need to go to the China shop solely because the writers want you to go to the China shop. There's a bull in there, which is very humorous.  Do you get it, do you get the joke  Welcome to my shop, dear lady. I am Fernando Bullforth, proprietor. Good day, sir. I, uh... hm. I'm sorry to hear that, Fernando. Is there anything I can do to help? Not unless you have found my Treasure. Someone stole your treasure? How awful! Was it gold, or gems? No, my Treasure, my precious china bird. I love my Treasure more than all the stars in the sky. She is my only friend and now -- now she's gone. Valanice has some hosed up priorities. ...Unfortunately, I've no money.You can tell we need the mask because it's poorly matted onto the painted background. The mask is horribly animated, too, and I honestly don't know why.   Both of these characters are horribly annoying, especially with the sound on. Fortunately you don't have to actually talk to either of them; unfortunately, they keep shoving themselves into cutscenes anyway. As revenge for bothering her, Queen Valanice is going to rob the fish-man blind.   If you haven't met Fernando, the bird refuses to leave his cage. Even though he's been kidnapped and can fly. Your friend Fernando is looking for you. He says he "loves his little Treasure more than all the stars in the sky." You've met him! Will you take me to him? Please? Of course. Here, hop onto my finger.  Let's give the bird back to the bull. Maybe something will finally happen?    At least Valanice got that mask she wanted. But you may have noticed that, so far, there's been no reason for anything Valanice has done. In fact -- and I am sure someone will try to argue that I am wrong, but it's true -- nothing Valanice does in Falderal makes any goddamn sense at all. Rosella isn't here, and eventually Valanice even learns this but still sticks around because... hm. The problem, of course, is that Falderal was going to play a much larger part in the plot. The specifics aren't all clear, but the whole sky is falling thing, and how it's resolved, were apparently going to be much more significant and would tie into the overarching game's story. The only reason they kept this stuff in (and this isn't a joke) is because they still wanted to have a cliffhanger in Chapter Three and couldn't afford to animate anything more, and the weird, disjointed nature of this section is the result. But you'll get to see plenty more of that next time, so stick around!
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Mar 27, 2015 05:57
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I did talk to all the NPCs I saw; you have to, to get through the chapter. Nobody mentioned anything. If you mean the magic mirror you find, of course that's significant and I will show it off but there's no reason Valanice would know it's there. I didn't try to steal the bird nine times though, mostly because why would I do that I did capture more mockingbird lines, which are great of course, but I didn't want to put them all at once. He's a good character but if you listen to him over and over he can get annoying. He is not pointless; you do get an item from him eventually, but talking to him is pointless. It's when he leaves that he becomes useful. corn in the bible fucked around with this message at 14:00 on Mar 27, 2015 |
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Mar 27, 2015 13:57
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I did not need any hints for this part either, because if you just follow along with the adventure game thing of doing stuff for people to get their items then you will do fine; using the mask is pretty well hinted at once you get it, for example. But it is a problem in storytelling if someone can genuinely succeed at your game and not know why they did it.
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Mar 27, 2015 14:10
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Azriel Odin posted:What the gently caress. Must have been a great place to work, huh?
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Mar 27, 2015 23:15
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CraigK posted:imagine something shrieking THE SKY IS FAWLING DIDJA HEAR ME THE SKY IS FAWLING over and over and over and aggh kill me When I mentioned to a friend I wanted to play through this game he suggested doing a video lp; I decided not to solely because it would mean listening to the voices. Valanice and Rosella aren't that bad, but the chicken and any other high pitched character (like the loving hummingbird) are just the worst. Fun fact: the way to turn on subtitles was only discovered a few years ago. They're clearly janky but still preferable to THA SKAIY IS FAAAALLIN
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Mar 28, 2015 00:25
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvonf7-Inr4 get hype
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Mar 28, 2015 03:41
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steinrokkan posted:Whoa, Sierra still exists? The trademark for Sierra still exists, but that's about it. They've been owned by Activision for ages, though, and haven't officially existed since 2008 when Activision retired the name, but even before that it was really just a name -- they haven't existed as a separately managed entity for over a decade. Activision brought back the name because, well, they own it and "Sierra Presents King's Quest 9" makes for good PR. The game is actually being made by Odd Gentlemen, the developers of PB Winterbottom . Interestingly, this is far from the first attempt to make a ninth King's Quest. In the manual for Mask of Eternity it mentioned that a ninth installment was "coming soon" and in interviews Roberta mentioned plans for a ninth, and even a tenth, story that she had planned out. Of course, Sierra fell apart not soon afterwards, so that never happened. Telltale Games also announced an episodic KQ project before quietly dropping it from their marketing, and fan-made sequel The Silver Lining stalled out when the developers realized you can make actual money if you do an original title instead. Now if only they'd make a new Quest for Glory...
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Mar 28, 2015 18:13
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Xander77 posted:http://www.hero-u.net/index.html Heroine's Quest is solid, but Hero U looks pretty bad in all the previews they've done. Also, there's Quest for Infamy, but... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCWDPTwflxw 
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Mar 28, 2015 18:44
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Nidoking posted:Dang. I was quite proud of the "crapped out" line, too, but to be fair, that was just my follow-up when Steve or Shawn gave me the first line. What, did you actually work on Quest for Infamy?
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Mar 29, 2015 02:35
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PART FIVE Fernando leaves the shop once you return his bird. I might be wrong, but I think that's the last we're going to see of him. Outside, something else is going on:  There's some sort of costumed party going on in Archduke Fifi's house, and we've got a mask, so let's get on in there! Oddly, if you click the mask on Valanice she also automatically heads to Town Hall and to the party, so there's no wandering around town with a mask on.  The mask looks terrible. It's horribly jarring, and doesn't mesh with the Valanice sprite at all, so that it is very clear they just lazily drew the thing on top of her already existing animation. Watch:   Fifi le Yipyap is dancing. None of these new NPCs can be examined or interacted with in any way, because that might be fun or interesting, but we can talk to the duke. Happy birthday, Arch-Duke Yipyap! Thank you, my loyal thubject! YipYipYip! Hee hee!That's it. This room is more or less pointless, possibly a remnant of greater plans abandoned. Valanice goes out the back door and takes off her mask to save on animation.   This looks like a maze or a puzzle but it's actually just a fork to two completely linear paths with no choice in direction. I wound up going to the upside-down door first, which I discovered later is entirely there to waste your time. You don't get anything out of visiting it, not even exposition or plot.    The other door leads, indirectly, to a version of this room that's right-side up. You would think this is used for a puzzle, but actually there isn't one. All that coming here upside-down means is we can't pick up any of the items in the room. We can check out that sweet painting, though!  You would think they would have odne some proof-reading for this agme, but I guess that wasn't a priority. Here's something stupid.  Through the door is a room full of mirrors.  We can check some of this stuff out, but none of it is useful to us right now. There's cryptic writing on the Cherub statue, but Valanice can't read it. The way out is simply to click the third mirror from the left, and GIF  Now we can grab that thing that fell out of the drawer! It is a "Magic Statuette."  That's it for now, there's nothing else we can do in Fifi's mansion. Back outside, the  THA SKAIY IS FAWLIN! BAKAWK! BAKAWK! shut up shut up shut up  The moon has fallen into the Falderal well, scaring away the mockingbird (a tragedy). Then the chicken turns into a series of animation errors.    Goodbye, mockingbird, we knew you all too briefly... let us remember some of his best lines, which I didn't put in the last update because it was too long already.    Such a bright mind, cut down in his prime. If you use the crying comb on the magic statuette it turns into a picture of Rosella.   Rosella is in mortal peril in the dark land of Ooga Booga. Rosella! Oh, my baby!But what's that in the mockingbird's nest?  It's a wooden nickel. Let's visit the "Faux Shop."  We cannot visit the Faux Shop until Valanice eats some salt crystals which makes the door lead into a shop instead of the alley behind it.  I found this wooden nickel, sir. What could I purchase with it? Why, you can buy this wonderful book! The Wit and Wisdom of Falderal! Here you are, madam. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha. Would you be interested in this lovely mask, Ersatz? Oh, I would! It's just magnificent! For that, I'll give you the best thing in my store. Ah... Thank you, I suppose. Good day, sir. I am Valanice of Daventry. I am Ersatz de Faux, the owner of this fine establishment. May I show you something in particular. Pardon me for asking, Ersatz, but am I wrong in saying everything in your shop is, well, how can I put this... Synthetic? Yes, you're absolutely right. I take pride in offering the widest selection of totally artificial things available anywhere. Why, even I myself am a mock turtle.We can check out the shop's products, but that's all the stuff we can get out of Ersatz. What does one do with false feet? They make impersonating yetis as easy as pie, and they're wonderful for stepping on cockroaches.Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha.  let's  backtrack  through  the  whole  game  because  that's  good  game  design  Aha! You offer me a book! I'll get my finest shepherd's crook!When faced with how to get the moon out of the well, obviously most players' first thought would be "eat salt so I can trade a mask for a book in a magic fake store, then walk to the first screen of the game and trade it for a staff." Here's a fun fact, though: in the demo for the game, this mouse has a different design. This means that they redid all his animation at some point after releasing it, though it's not clear why. Very odd. Oh, and someone wanted more of the badger guards' dialog, so here's one of the other things they can say when you enter the city:  Thanks for the warning little fellow. Oh, big fat hairy rats.There are rat people living right in this town, so I guess the badger is just a fuckin' racist.   her face I thaw what you jutht did! You jutht thtole the moon! MOON THIEF! Yapyapyap HUMAN! (slurp) yipyipyip PARTYI arrest you for all of the reasons My Lord the Arch-Duke Yipyap stated, plus the heinous and disgusting crime of having no fur or feathers to hide your bald face. Let's lock her up until we figure out what to do with her. YipYipYip SEIZE HER!End of chapter. Time taken: 26 minutes. I don't think Retsupurae ever made it this far, so I guess I... win? Here's something worth knowing, though: they wanted to cut the moon plotline entirely, as they had already excised a fair bit of it, but left it in solely so they could have a cliffhanger at the end of Chapter Three. So there's that.
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Mar 30, 2015 01:39
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Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:That's just regular cartoony exaggeration. It wouldn't be that odd if the game weren't trying to mix that with its Disney Princesses realistic animation. Troll-Rosella is 90% smears by volume, which vanishes the second she becomes human again. Smears and exaggeration are fine in a normal situation, but with the low fps they use for animation in this game it can make certain things look really terrible.
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Mar 30, 2015 21:45
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PART SIX It's back to Rosella for this chapter. A journey to Ooga Booga, land of endless repetitive backtracking!  This is what Valanice saw in her mirror. Note that nobody is around.  Suddenly, there's just... a guy. Stunning storyboarding here. I loving hate this guy and you'll see why soon enough.  You have to click his shovel, or you die. There are a lot of bullshit deaths in Ooga Booga.  This is the problem with the gravedigger: his animations are so, so slow, and everything he does takes forever. Look at this:   Nuts, nuts, NUTS! This is gonna take forever. I can't STAND this rotten, worthless little shovel. Look at that! Pathetic. That wasn't enough dirt to suffocate a bug. NUTS!You have to talk to him over and over until he says something important, much like the deer. Aren't you glad they got rid of dialog trees for this game? Streamlining is the same thing as good game design! So just assume that occasionally, between lines, I had to watch a slow animation of him grabbing his shovel and shoveling a bit before I could get the next bit of dialog. Um, hello, good fellow. Thank you again. I wonder --Just kidding! You don't have to imagine it!  You also can't avoid these scenes. Sometimes it seems as if they deliberately made the most annoying parts the ones you can't skip over. I don't need a grave yet, thanks to you, sir. Could you tell me if this is the land of Ooga Booga? Yeah, this is Ooga Booga all right. Pardon me for saying so, but isn't that shovel a little too small for the task at hand? You said it, lady. This is the wrong equipment for the job. Here, let me show you something.   Iggy was trained special. Besides, there ain't no other rat as strong as Iggy. Or as smart, neither. He must be a very special rodent. He is.You need to experience all of this great dialog because otherwise, even if you find the rat (that's our goal for now, you see) Rosella won't hand it over to the gravedigger. Which makes sense, I suppose, even if I wish he'd walk a little faster. South of here is some little poo poo in a pumpkin.  To the west, another kid is doing graffiti.  Then you have to leave the area and return to the house's vicinity again to see the first kid throwing eggs.  If you don't wander around until you've seen all three scenes, entering the pumpkin will kill you. Once you have, though, an elevator appears for no reason and you can use it to ascend safely. It's like a puzzle, if you're insane.   There's some stuff to grab from here, which will be useful later.  It's someone's backbone. I'm not sure what those things that fell off it are supposed to be.  I suppose a girl never knows when she'll need a foot in a bag. Especially in Ooga Booga land!Rosella has no problem stuffing some dead guy's foot in her pocket, because the royal family of Daventry just doesn't give a gently caress. You can take the elevator back down, if you want, and if you later find you missed something it's convenient to have done so. We've got everything, though, so  Back to the house. All told, there are only six real locations in Ooga Booga because the main theme of Rosella's storyline in this game is endless padding.  Um, hello. I am Rosella of Daventry. M -- may I ask you a few questions? Certainly, Miss Rosella. Do come in. Quickly, please! I am looking for King Otar, ruler of the trolls. I've heard that he's been... detained in this land. Have you heard anything about that?  Count Tsepish is, of course, a reference to Dracula, and the kids from before are a reference to Nightmare Before Christmas. Basically, Sierra ran out of fairy tales and have decided to just go with whatever the hell they feel like, and Ooga Booga is our generic horror land for this game. They've got problems, but Rosella isn't going to do poo poo about them unless it benefits herself, so it will be up to Valanice to rescue their ruler and fix the problems of this land. In fact, most of the troubles in this world end up being solved by Valanice, who really comes across as the real heroine of the story even if it's Rosella who ends up defeating Malicia. Even the volcano, which you may have forgotten about but which is the entire point of this game, is sorted out through Valanice's actions and not Rosella's. Maybe they wanted to let Valanice have her time to shine, since Rosella had already starred in a game before this one? Oh yeah, and we have a backbone already so let's give it to this dude.  Oh, I am eternally grateful to you. I would like to repay you in some small way.  There's not much else to do here. We can talk to the mouse, though.  Nothing says whimsical adventures like a Silence of the Lambs reference. Time for Rosella to torture some small children!   Is it a severed head? A crawling eyeball? No, it's something better! It's the best, weirdest, creepiest pet in the world!  CADAVEROUS!Get it? Because cadaver means a corpse!! It's loving comedy gold.  You can take the elevator up, but I think that kills you. Not sure, though, because I didn't try it. Instead, put the box in the elevator and send it up so it can murder children with its pointy teeth. Cadaverous! He's biting me! Oo! Skeletal! Look at his TEETH! It's my turn! My turn!Then, the worst animation in the game happens.  The animation for Chapter Four was done by a company called LA West Film Production, which was based out of Croatia. During the production period for King's Quest 7, Croatia was in the process of splitting off from Yugoslavia, and was at war with both the Serbian nationalist forces and Herzeg-Bosnia. So when you make fun of this game, remember that there was a very real risk that some of the head animators would be executed by Slobodan Milosevic.  IGGY! Thank you so much. My only talent in the world is digging, but I'll dig you a grave anywhere you blow this horn. Blow the horn and I'll hear you and come and dig your grave. Okay? C'mon Iggy, let's go fire that bad boy up! They're not really important, but Sierra could never resist putting joke gravestones in a place like this:  They're not really funny, but that's besides the point.  Man, the yuks just don't stop. And guess what: we have to go back to the pumpkin area, again, to deal with the kids, again. Ooga Booga, land of reused art assets!  Hush up, kitty! Whe was in the prime of life [sic] If only she hadn't been runned over by an ox cart! If only she didn't get the plague! If only -- if only we had a better pet!But you do, we gave you one! And it killed you! Remember?   I think so.Why can the cat talk? King Graham could only talk to animals because of a magical blessing, remember? It's not even a cat person, it's just some moggy that was nailed in a box! Thank you, my lady. I heard you speaking with my friend, Dr. Cadaver. The King of the Trolls is imprisoned in the realm of the Boogyman, beneath the deadfall. Thank you! I must go to him at once!You can skip helping the cat, and it's not unreasonable to figure out where you need to go next since once you see it and have the horn it's pretty obvious what to do. But if you don't make the moral choice to help the cat, you lose paragon points and get the renegade ending. Wait! There is something I wish to give you. Hold out your hand. It is one of my lives, my lady. You saved one of mine, so I feel I owe it to you. I still have eight left.Or you just get a magic revival thing, whatever. It's still the divergence point for the good ending. But don't worry, LP fans, you'll get to see both! How exciting! There's nothing left to do here but wander around until something happens. Here's a beautiful animation.  And here's the boogyman. Spooky!  Will he kill Rosella? How will she escape? Find out next time, I guess! corn in the bible fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Apr 3, 2015 |
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Apr 3, 2015 20:38
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Anoia posted:Nightmare Before Christmas came out a year before this game, but I'm sure it's a total coincidence Ooga Booga Land is Halloween themed and has a bunch of bratty kids running around. The kids don't even get names. In the credits they're just KID 1 and KID 2
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Apr 3, 2015 22:40
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grandalt posted:There he is. That is how I picture the Boogyman, lean and mean. Fun fact, he can show up to get you all over the land of Ooga Booga. Really? He never did that to me. One scene and that was it. Maybe that's another thing they patched out?
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Apr 4, 2015 20:24
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Chapter Four might be the worst chapter in the game, but I am very excited for when a plot will happen in chapter six i guess
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Apr 5, 2015 00:25
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Why is th thread locked
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Apr 6, 2015 00:03
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I have more of Chapter Four recorded, enough for one more update, but it is physically hard to make myself play more King's Quest 7 when I could be doing literally anything else. Everyone else was right, and this game is mostly just boring rather than outright hilariously terrible. So that sucks. I would still like to finish the LP at some point but I'm going to be working on something more fun for the moment, alright? I bet Slowbeef wants to finish his retsupurae someday. we all live in hope.
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Apr 6, 2015 05:20
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Nidoking posted:I'd do it, but I hate working with screenshots, and continuing a screenshot LP in videos seems like an even bigger shift than the sudden reversal in tone from outright loathing to mere disappointment, which would cause whiplash in most viewers. And I hate working in screenshots when I've got a perfectly good video recorded and can just add commentary and upload it. I really did hate the first few chapters, especially Dog Town, which is why it was much easier to write about them. After that there's just nothing at all going on in this game.
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Apr 6, 2015 14:20
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak7HNiUGVNA now suit up baby its the endgame
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May 27, 2015 17:44
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finish your kings quest lets play bible corn
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May 27, 2015 21:45
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THE LESBIATHAN posted:Wrong, he's gonna be playing this gem of a game. why are you so cruel
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May 27, 2015 21:54
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